Here’s a few shots from Sunday night’s show at the airport. Had a few red eye flights (is there any other kind in Anchorage?) take off towards the aurora and into my frame. The people on those flights definitely got the best seats in the house!

Aurora and jet.

Aurora over Los Anchorage. Even managed to capture a jet flying towards the city.

Aurora reflecting in Cook Inlet.

Monday night, after work, I headed up to Powerline Pass to check on any moose activity. I had to take advantage of one of the first days without crazy wind/rain almost a month. I haven’t seen the numbers of moose congregating in Powerline during the rut as I have in years past, so I was happy to find this bull. He was hanging with his harem of 6 females and one spike fork.

Like this:

A few pics of last night’s aurora shot near Girdwood. It was cloudy with rain in Anchorage, luckily, I got a phone call from my friend Joel in Girdwood to let me know the sky was clear there and the aurora was in full swing.

There were some crazy flashes in the sky. I found out later the flashes I saw was lightning that caused a deep purple in some of my photos.

Like this:

Sabrina, Tika, and I decided to change things up this year. We love the fall in the Yukon, but instead of heading to Haines, like we normally do, we decided to check out Skagway since we had never been. We got a late start on Friday, but lucked out and got far enough north to escape the clouds in Southcentral and got a small display of aurora.

Aurora and the just past full harvest moon.

The Yukon!

Sabrina in the Yukon, Tika in Alaska.

Fall colors along the Alcan.

Bove Island, Yukon.

When we got to Skagway, we happened upon Octoberfest and some great music at the brewery. We also learned of a race the next day, “Box of Rocks.” It’s a self-timed 3 mile race from downtown Skagway to Upper Dewey Lake a 3100 ft elevation gain. 2600 ft of that is in the last 2.5 miles between Lower Lake and Upper Lake. At the lake, everyone reports their time, drinks a PBR, and helicopters down! We signed up right away 🙂 Suprisingly, they even let Tika in the helicopter.

Upper (Dewey) Lake.

Temsco helicopter landing near Upper Lake.

From inside the helicopter, heading to Skagway on the right.

I found a chair that suited me.

We found that if you didn’t hit Skagway on a cruise ship day, most things are shut down. Unfortunately, that meant we couldn’t ride the White Pass RR. We decided to head back a little early, to spend more time in the Yukon with the fall colors and to check out some spots we had never been to between Whitehorse and Skagway. The area between the border and Carcross was stunning.

Venus Mill on Windy Arm, Yukon Territory.

Fall was definitely in full swing.

The biggest suprise of the trip was the Carcross Desert-northern sand dunes made up of glacial silt.

The northern lights put on quite a show last night! Lots of dancing, and, at one point the northern lights stretched overhead 180 degrees from over downtown Anchorage to O’malley peak. I took these pics from the Anchorage overlook at Glenn Alps.

Aurora over O’Malley Peak.

Aurora with east Anchorage city lights.

O’Malley PeakRumor has it the northern lights are supposed to be active again tonight!